Anyone know about house A/C units?

[Evil Queen]

I have an outdoor unit only (no split types), and the coil outside keeps icing up and it won't blow cold air.

I let it thaw last night....HOT, HOT, HOT........and turned it to 78 this morning and flipped it back on. It was blowing cool. I just went outside to check on the coils and sure enough it's icing over again. The filter is clean, I even left it off this morning for the turning back on, so I don't believe it's the filter anyway. And it's not blowing air at all.

Any clue what I may be looking at and is there anything I can try at home before calling a tech?

I hate to spend money on something I don't need to, especially since I'm looking at having to replace the master brake cylinder on my car, plus front brakes. If I have to deal with two big repairs, that's really going to hurt the old pocketbook.

 

[FroggyinArk]

sounds like you are low on freon, or have aleak, sorry butits tiome to call in a liscenced tech to service your unit before you burn out more expensive parts tryingto continue running it.

 

[Tiggeroo]

yep. We have an hvac business. Icing means low refrigerant and therefore a leak. It's not an expensive service call. Should be around $100.

 

[SC Minnie]

We have a slow leak in our upstairs unit and have to have freon added every year. It has frozen up on us a couple of times and its allways when it's unbearbly hot.

We were given an estimate to repair the problem but it was in the thousands of dollars. We are looking to remodel in about 4 years so we decided to wait and put in a new unit then.

 

[Evil Queen]

Ok, thanks. Guess I'll be calling them today.

 

[Evil Queen]

yep. We have an hvac business. Icing means low refrigerant and therefore a leak. It's not an expensive service call. Should be around $100.

Ok, one more question. When I call should I tell them I just want to do the freon? I feel so-so on my company. They are great with working out payments with us, since we've been a customer for over 30 years, but seems like they always find something wrong with the unit (and not cheap either). 2 years ago when I had to do a service call, because not blowing and icing up it cost me a pretty penny.

I checked it a couple of times before finally turning it off this morning, it does still blow cold after all. So it probably is just the freon?

 

[Tiggeroo]

you can tell them you want a leak check and charge. I should warn you that occasionally there can be a bigger problem causing a leak but 99% of the time it's a simple leak. If they don't find the leak you could lose your charge again.
Do you remember where the leak was before? Maybe that would help.

 

[Evil Queen]

you can tell them you want a leak check and charge. I should warn you that occasionally there can be a bigger problem causing a leak but 99% of the time it's a simple leak. If they don't find the leak you could lose your charge again.
Do you remember where the leak was before? Maybe that would help.

No, I wish I did. I think this time I will take notes and ask many questions.

Seems like almost every summer I have to call them for problems (other than maintenance), and it also seems to happen during June. We always get quick brown outs throughout the beginning of summer and the AC unit acts up with this problem.

 

[Tiggeroo]

there are tons of service calls in June. Most of them are low freon or a blown fuse, something little happening the first couple times a unit is fired up. Maybe you could avoid some of it by getting a pm every season. They usually run around $45. with coupons and they'll fire your unit up for the first time plus look it over and clean things. Brown outs can affect things. I think there's something you can do to reduce the drag on your unit. You'd have to ask somebody with electrical exp.

 

[Evil Queen]

Dang. AC tech gave me a price of $750.00 to start. Not sure if that is good or not.

That scares me, about as much as the dead snake he found in the AC unit.

States coils need an acid cleaning, and replacing the fan motor. But not including the freon. He gave me a price for him doing it as a side job, I'm not so sure I want to take that route, being as I wouldn't be given any warranty or guarantee. For the cost of $450.00 and he'd work with me on the freon cost.

Seems like I replace more fan motors than anything. Having older son hunt for receipt for last year's AC call. This is too big of a bill year after year.

 

[ktulu]

My FIL is a commercial a/c guy, works on the big chillers and stuff like that. We had the same problem, he told me to check my filter, sure enough it needed changed and hasn't iced up since then.

The acid wash sounds suspicious to me, he's never mentioned anything like that.

darren